Tuesday, 24 November 2015

It's the last of my trilogy of Impromptu Quick Crappy Review and I honestly don’t know how
and if I’m going to be able to do this, but I’m determined to do it so…sorry.

If you’ve been in the
Disney Store in the last year or two you should have seen these, probably. I
dunno, I don’t know how much attention you pay when you’re in the Disney Store,
maybe you just go straight to the Star Wars section (though that has a set now
too) or the big screen draws you like a moth, you watch two music videos and
then leave wondering what happened. But
hopefully you imaginary readers will be familiar with the concept of these
figurine playsets, Disney have been making them for whatever they’re currently
promoting and using any excuse to make one for older properties so I guess they
must sell pretty well, the number of figurines in each varies (in fact this set
has a rather small number) and they’re about £12-£15 over here. I like ‘em and if I was under 10 today I’d be
all over ‘em like a rash (shaped like a Hidden Mickey obviously), they’re good
value for money, allow you get a figural representation of lots of characters –
including some that you unquestionably wouldn’t have gotten in a standard
action figure line – and the odd bit of paint slop aside they’re really good
quality. But I’m not under 10 (really) and I haven’t bought any yet, I’ve
wanted to but logic has always taken over, and logic says “what the fuck are
you doing to do with these if you buy
them?” while you may think that’s true of every toy an adult buys it really
isn’t; when they’re outside of the scales or franchises featured in my
dedicated toy areas I use toys (and other merch) like ornaments so they have to
feel like ornaments, a vintage Action Man feels like an ornament, a modern
collectors’ figure feels like an ornament, but (ironically as these are closer
to real ornaments than most) Disney’s figurine sets don’t – they feel like what
they are, toys, which is absolutely fine if you’re the target age range but as
we’ve discovered I am Groot not.

But even I have my limits
of self-control, and making a Mickey’s Christmas Carol set pushed those limits
way beyond breaking point.

Monday, 23 November 2015

I’m having a very Monster
High-y week; the Frightfully Tall Ghouls are now in stores with two of them in
my house already (though I couldn’t find the TRU exclusive Elissabat – yet –
but my borderline creepy love for that design WILL drive me on until I have a
17” version of her) and then today my City Ghouls pack arrived from America! I
was so excited I stopped making breakfast to play with them, did you get that?
I postponed food for them. I don’t
postpone food for real people, even the ones I actually like. Mostly my
excitement – and my importing them rather than just waiting for them to show in
my local Asda – is from me depriving myself of the characters unlit this pack
came out and I could buy them in their ‘default’ outfits so they’d fit in with
all the other ghouls and having to walk past walls of them all tarted up in
their Gala Ghoulfriends ball gowns feeling left out that I didn’t own them yet.
But they’re here now and they were definitely worth the wait.

Sunday, 22 November 2015

I finally get to talk about
something Ninja Turtles! And by happy coincidence it’s a figure that allows me
to strut my funky stuff show off my
knowledge of Turtles history, you see this cartoon beaver actually has his
origins in the earliest days of the franchise, in fact in the first things that
really made it a franchise and not just an explicably popular black and white
indie comic with a bizarre title. But first a little story: I went to Smyths
toys for a reason that didn’t involve beavers at all, in fact I find I rarely
go anywhere for beavers, beavers just tend to find me, I’m that sort of fellow
and true to form Dark Beaver here found me – by falling on my head. I didn’t
even known he was out, new TMNT figures have slowed down to a Monkey Brains
shaped trickle of late and I was in fact just amusing myself with a head
dropping Turtle, a figure then fell on me and being a boy raised on Care Bears
and Captain Planet I dutifully put it back, only to see it was Dark Beaver, he
had snuck into stores without my knowledge, it was fate, I bought a beaver –
again.

Thursday, 12 November 2015

Released in 1985 at
conveniently the same time Hasbro’s Wuzzles poseable figures they are
conveniently the exact same concept of two cartoon animals smooshed into one,
they claim to be The Original Two-Feature Creatures, which I’d believe if Remco
ever originated anything in their entire time as a company and didn’t instead
make all their income from parents who didn’t quite know what that thing their
kids were into was called and/or couldn’t afford that thing their kids were
into and thought Remco’s wares would be an acceptable substitute. As that IS
true, I’m just going to assume ‘The Original’ is another part in of their ploy
to convince parents who didn’t quite know what that thing their kids were into
was called

Friday, 6 November 2015

So
I went to winter MCM London Comic Con in October but didn’t post about it
because it was still Countdown to Halloween Month and there was no way I could
even tangentially relate it to Halloween (there wasn’t even that many
horror-themed cosplayers). I go to both MCMs every year, it’s held in the ExCel
Centre, a convention complex that’s about the same size as my hometown and I
mostly go for the comfort of being surrounded by 1,000s of people who won’t
judge me (until the find out I like Star Wars better than Star Trek anyway),
it’s not as popular with my group of friends as LFCC and with one of them
working and the other in America only two of us went and when we are left to do
something together by god we’re efficient, we got in, out and spent loads of
money within 3 hours. This should not reflect on the size or quality of the con
though, in fact it’s probably one of the nicest laid out I’ve been to in years
[Ok I want a qualifying statement before I go on, the dealers were not nicely
laid out, they were in three different patterns and it played havoc with our
organised brains, you have many, many nerds to cater for MCM, make it logical
or else we will have issues]. The
summer MCM was horribly laid out, it was all stuffed into one area leaving
everything – dealers, talks, video games, signings, feeling short-changed and
me feeling frustrated, I did get a vintage Action Man Astronaut & Space
Capsule and a bendy Ivan Ooze so it was fruitful, but laid out like crap; this
was far, FAR better with the inflatable dome things they’re using for smaller
talks and the big loud stands in a separate area and eating and ATM machines in
another room which meant people could sit, eat and draw money out without being
cramped and/or it taking forever – when you’ve got hundreds of people in bulky,
inconvenient cosplay lots of room to sit and queue is really appreciated by
all.

Wednesday, 4 November 2015

I
really can’t be trusted to go to Toys ‘R’ Us, I went to buy my mum’s godson a
birthday present and bought two wrestlers, he doesn’t even like wrestling!

The
last time I bought a WWF action figure new was about 1992, I was about 7 and it
was, I think, (about) the Big Bossman. Why haven’t I bought any since then?
Well by the time I was ‘collecting’ action figures in my teens the Attitude Era
was on, which I didn’t like, and Jakks Pacific had the license and Jakks’
figures were pretty much shit. By the time I got back into buying toys for
myself a few years ago there was barely any characters active I recognised and
Mattel and their buck system were in charge, there were thousands of figures I
didn’t recognise yet all looked very similar to each other. Then I started back
at the bootsales and these figures were everywhere, nothing is more
disappointing at a bootsale than thinking you’ve ground a stall with a box of
action figures just for them turn out be loads of two year old wrestlers you
don’t know and don’t care about. So what changed? Well Mattel has improved
their buck and then they made the perfect Rick Flair figure, pretty much.